Customer Reviews

Epson Stylus CX7400 All-in-One Printer (C11C689201)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(74)

 

 

DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!

Well, it looks like I am about to join the multitude of other voices who just discovered the "ink problem". First off, I ran out after several months even though I use my printer like once a week. And the printer simply locked up, not letting me continue to print regardless of the ink level. I'm sorry, but if I say print, you print; I don't care if I get some faded or near invisible printout, I don't need dark ink for directions to cousin Jenny's baby shower. Unable to refill the ink at local Walgreens, I bit the bullet and dropped 16 dollars for a new black inch cartridge, plugged it in, and the printer still didn't print. It was out of cyan ink. DID I EVEN PRINT IN COLOR??? I spent a good part of twenty minutes while my four year old complained of interrupting her webkinz session, looking for an option to print in black and white only. The result...nothing, it still wouldn't print. It won't print in Black and White because I didn't have the color Cyan (say what???). Now I need to purchase the other three colors (somehow, despite never printing in color, I am less then 25% on all three colors). I got this printer for free with a new computer I purchased, and I made the fateful mistake of selling off my old HP printer for $10 at a garage sale. Thought it was a deal at the time, now I am thoroughly regretting it.

DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!! I will never consider Epson again.

UPDATE: I did eventually purchase the other three ink cartridges (something of the tune of 40 dollars or so). This got the printer working again for a while until, low and behold, I began running out of color ink AGAIN. this time I KNOW I never printed in color. I was spared making that decision though as with in a few days the printer started malfunctioning, printing gibberish for no known cause. I went to Walmart and bought a 30 dollar Lexmark printer, and it is doing just fine.

I got this printer a few months ago, and I was satisfied with the amount of features for the price. I replaced the original ink catridge when it was low, and it worked fine. I have NOT printed in color, though, and yet my color ink catridges are down to 25% or less.

I replaced my black ink catridge a few days ago and have only printed about ~50 pages of black text. The paper jams, and then suddenly it says my black ink catridge is empty and needs to be replaced. There is NO manual override. It does NOT allow you print unless you replace the black ink catridge! This is so frustrating, since I know it is not used up, and even the last page before the paper jam was perfectly printed!

The troubleshooting guide on the Epson site for this printer also will not load. I always bought the cheapest printers, and just when I spring for an all-in-one, it disappoints me.

On the plus side, the print quality is great, and there are a lot of features. However, on the minus side, if you run out of black ink, you are STUCK. You cannot do anything (not even clean nozzles of print heads). Also, given my experience, one paper jam can cause your printer to suddenly decide you're out of ink. If I could still return this printer, I would, and instead I'd just buy a cheap, regular printer with no bells and whistles to break.

This device is great if you are just using it to scan documents to files and not actually using it as a printer at all. And it would probably be OK if you do mostly color printing: the ink isn't really all that expensive if you are comparing it to replacing color cartridges on other machines.

However, I made the big mistake of buying this when I print a number of documents each day, and over 99% of my printing is b&w. Having to continually replace color cartridges in order to use the black ink is clearly a device to get the purchaser to spend money on something that is literally being thrown away. According to the documentation, the rationale for using color ink when not printing in color is that it keeps the print heads clean. I am dubious. My first assumption, when using this printer, was that it must be creating "black" by mixing all the colors together; the cartridges were emptying so fast. And I thought I was being clever by finding and clicking on the "Print Black Only" option. But it made no difference.

My plan is to continue using this "printer" as a scanner and for my kids to occasionally print school projects in color. When I buy my next set of ink cartridges (probably tomorrow), I'll be also picking up an HP deskjet of some kind, because I know they make printers that have no problem printing in B&W with an empty color cartridge.

I was very disappointed with this printer. The quality of printing is fine, but there are lots of inexpensive printers with fairly good quality. Epson has built kind of a dirty trick into its ink cartridges. If any of the ink cartridges is very low on ink, the printer won't print ANYTHING in ANY color. AND, you cannot refill the cartridges yourself or buy inexpensive refills, because the cartridge is programmed to shut itself and the entire printer down once any cartridge gets below a certain level of ink. You are forced to keep the printer stocked with all three colors plus black to be able to print at all, AND you are forced to buy expensive Epson cartridges. I also found the paper was difficult to load, and the printer is very "picky" about the paper you put in it. If you try too heavy or too thin of paper, it will not print.

I will never buy an Epson printer again. I bought this printer with my new Windows Vista computer a few months ago. Epson advertised this printer as being Windows Vista compatible, and offered a deal on it. While the printer works, the scanner does not. This is due to the crappy Epson Scan software which does NOT work with Windows Vista. I could not get the Epson Scan software to install, I kept getting a message that it found the driver software but "cannot find file specified." After numerous e-mails and uninstalls/re-installs (and restarting my computer over and over again), nothing worked. Of course, Epson support was slow to respond to my inquires, so this took weeks.

Finally, after some searching on Google, I figured out this was a problem with the Epson Scan software and it has affected many users of Windows Vista who have bought many different Epson scanners/all-in-ones, see [...]. The problem is that in order to install its driver, Epson Scan requires your operating system to have the system file usbscan.sys, which used to be on pre-Vista versions of Windows but is not included with Windows Vista. Epson Scan was really designed for pre-Vista versions of Windows. They did not take into account the fact that usbscan.sys is not part of Windows Vista.

Also, one cannot readily copy this file (assuming you can get a copy of it, I did from an older computer) into the necessary driver subfolders in the Windows system32 folder due to access restrictions.

Epson should not be selling Epson Scan as compatible with Windows Vista, it is not. Or at a minimum, Epson should warn consumers that their scan software will not work with Windows Vista (actually it won't install), so that consumers don't have to waste so much time, like me, doing unnecessary uninstalls/reinstalls at Epson's Support's request.

I guess one can buy other scanning software that works with the scanner and is truly compatible with Windows Vista. I haven't tried that yet.

I will never buy an Epson printer again. I typically get HP printers and never had a problem.

Just don't! The paper regularly jams. The problems caused when the black ink runs out have been noted in many other reviews. The ink is very expensive and not always easy to find. While the print quality is decent when the stars are in alignment, you can do better than this!

It stopped working and said the ink cartridges were empty and need to be changed after I printed only a few pages. I couldn't believe a brand new printer ran out of ink so fast. My dell printer lasts for a few years. I know for sure that ink catridges are not empty. I already wasted my money in buying this printer. I don't want to waste any money in buying these only last-for-a -pages ink cartidges. Don't waster your money in this printer.

Don't Buy Epson.

Original Review (prior to running through the ink):

After trying Lexmark and HP Deskjet All in One Printers, we tried this printer. Great quality print, easy to use copy feature, and automatic color restoration for scanning our old photos into the computer! Great price especially considering it comes with the large capacity "69" ink cartridges, which are pretty inexpensive (about $10). Only quirk we found was in scanning "textured photos" (some of our old photos have a series of hemispherical bumps on them) it gave a dust like effect (glare maybe?), but nothing a simple dust remover routine couldn't fix. Textured photos are so rare, we are probably the only people who will have this issue. Software even works with Windows 2000, XP, and is Vista Ready! Good stuff.

Definitely would recommend to all!

(end original)

Yep, doesn't allow you to continue printing if an ink-well runs out. But unlike some reviewers misstate, you only have to replace the one ink well that is out. But, you MUST replace that inkwell to continue printing. And yep, it uses color ink when printing only black and white. (DAMN Epson) I would NOT recommend Epson because it uses color when printing b/w, and because there are no generics or ability to refill cartridges (either one would have been fine in my book). If I could, I'd demote them 2 stars.

expensive ink. uses colors while printing black only.
cannot recommend. will not buy another Epson!!

I purchased this printer a month ago to use at work. The printer seemed great for the price, had a nice look to it, printed well (although a little loud). Everything was fine.. UNTIL it ran out of ink. As has already been mentioned in a previous review, this printer uses color ink even when you only print with black text. When the colored ink runs out, you CANT PRINT unless you replace it. Thus, you get to buy 4 different colors of ink, and of course Epson recommends that you use their ink.

After this ripoff.. I will never buy an epson product again!!